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For librarians and people interested in search engines, searching the net, designing web pages, new utilities and so on. Short commentaries, keeping you up to date with the world of internet search and design.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

As I mentioned, I've been spending time at Online this week. There are several blogs about it already such as InfoToday. I moderated a session called Eureka! which is a questions and answers session, and I thought it might be interesting to blog the questions asked and answers given.

What's the most important development in internet search in 2004?CS: True alternatives to Google are now becoming apparent, with smaller niche players getting more involved.MEB: Slider bars!KB: RSS Feeds, and the Find.com website for business information.GP: Sliders, search shortcuts and a new search engine called Exalead

How have your search strategies changed over the last year?MEB: I don't start with general search engines now; I'm doing more resource discovery. I don't look for the answer, I look for where it can be found, and I'll be searching blogs more often.KB: I use evaluated listings more often, and when I use search engines I've found that using file format based searching is more effective.GP: I go to source when possible, and use non commercial resources such as the Resource Discovery Network, Infomine and the Librarian's Index to the Internet.CS: Searching has changed dramatically because of the Google Desktop function.

What do the panel think of the Google Desktop function?CS: Users have very little control over it, which is a legitimate concern, but it works well in a personal context. Although there are security concerns, the Desktop is just enabling functionality; it's down to individual companies to properly protect data and improve the security of their own products.KB: If you're a Microsoft junkie that's great, but since I use a lot of non-Microsoft products, it's not much use. Copernic is a good alternative.GP: I use both Google and Copernic, and Google is good for storing and delivering different versions of the same document.MEB: I like Google Desktop, and use it, but since I use Eudora as my email client, it's not much use for that.

What do the panel think of the new Google Scholar?KB: Disappointing. There is no proper listing of what is covered, it's not sophisticated and there is limited search capabilities.GP: Credit to Google for doing it, and it's maybe a bit of a wakeup call for librarians. It's poorly named though; better would have been Google Library.CS: It's a promising start.MEB: It's great for librarians, if they can introduce their clients to it, and frame it in a proper context.

Any views on clustering search engines?GP: Clusty is a good example. They're good for providing some extra value and helping with information discovery.KB: Vivisimo is an excellent tool, and the one that I generally use when using a clustering engine.MEB: I find them really useful when a search is going astray and I need to rethink my search strategy.CS: Grokker is a good visualisation tool.

What are your favourite new search engines?GP: Exalead is very good indeed, and I've also found that Topix.net is worth using as well.KB: Not a new search engine, but Yahoo, and the use of their RSS feeds are really excellent.MEB: A9 is very useful and has a lot of functionality.CS: The Yahoo! directory function has been reworked this year and is very valuable.

Any strategies or views on searching the invisible web?CS: There are a lot of people who are working on this problem at the moment, and the invisible is still between 2-50 times larger than the visible web, and I wonder if it is actually a good idea to increase that visibility?GP: Many people are still doing very simple searches, and one could argue that the invisible web is actually anything that is outside the top 5 results in a search engine! A good resource to use is Virtualchase.comMEB: People have to have a different mindset, and to start thinking laterally. Teoma is useful for resources and providing access to link rich pages that lead to useful invisible web sites.KB: I find using the link: function is a really good way of finding who is linking to a site, and that often leads me to very good sites with invisible content.

Well, that's a very brief summary of what we talked about; my apologies to the panel if I've summarised and cut short all their useful comments, and I hope that I've kept them in context. Any omissions or inacuracies are mine.Phil 7:13 PM